Politics, current events, human interest & some humor

About the Common Constitutionalist

Brent, aka The Common Constitutionalist, is a Constitutional Conservative, and advocates for first principles, founders original intent and enemy of progressives. He is former Navy, Martial Arts expert. As well as publisher of the Common Constitutionalist blog, he also is a contributing writer for Political Outcast, Godfather Politics, Minute Men News (Liberty Alliance), Freedom Outpost, the Daily Caller, Vision To America and Free Republic. He also writes an exclusive weekly column for World Net Daily (WND).

Obviously everyone is a little disappointed. Then 50,000 blondes start cheering, “Give her another chance! Give her another chance!”

The leader says, “Well since we’ve gone to the trouble of getting 50,000 of you in one place and we have the world-wide press and global broadcast media here, gee, uh, I guess we can give her another chance.”

So he asks, “What is 5 plus 5?”

After nearly 30 seconds she eventually says, “Ninety?”

The leader is quite perplexed, looks down and just lets out a dejected sigh — everyone is disheartened, the blonde starts crying and the 50,000 girls begin to yell and wave their hands shouting, “GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE! GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE!”

The leader, unsure whether or not she is doing more harm than good, eventually says, “Ok! Ok! Just one more chance — What is 2 plus 2?”

The girl closes her eyes, and after a whole minute eventually says, “Four?” Pandemonium breaks out throughout the stadium as all 50,000 girls jump to their feet, wave their arms, stomp their feet and scream…

The SEIU (Service Employees International Union), one of the most corrupt organizations this side of ACORN has been discovered to be worse yet. Is that possible?

Yes, yes it is.

In the latest discovery of abhorrent behavior, the SEIU is confiscating money from the caregivers of families with special needs children & adults. Ok, it’s not exactly that simple. It never is with these organizations.

These caregivers are forced to be part of the union & thus forced to pay Union dues.

Maybe these home care workers should be unionized. For the record, I don’t agree, but that’s not the point of this article.

To shed some light on this, let’s go back to the commencement of the Michigan program.

In 2005, the MQCCC (Michigan Quality Community Care Council), also known as the MQ3C, was created. The council kept a registry of home care providers, but its main function was to be the so-called government “employer” for some 45,000 private home care aides. These home care providers are independent contractors, but are still forced to become dues paying members of SEIU Healthcare Michigan.

In 2006, under then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich, SEIU began a collective bargaining agreement with the MQ3C in which dues were automatically skimmed off the money payed to MQ3C by Medicaid. How much could that possibly be? About 6 million dollars a year.

So this has been going on for almost six years. Wait, it gets worse.

In May of this year the Michigan legislature ended the funding for the MQ3C program with an expiration date of September 30th.

How strange it is that even after the program expired, the dues are still being taken off the top of the Medicaid payments by a defunct department & sent to SEIU.

Angela Minicuci, public information officer for the Michigan Department of Community Health would not explain how a defunded agency continues to operate.

“For the state to operate a dubiously formed government entity that has been defunded by the Legislature seems unprecedented,” said Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “But such shenanigans aren’t entirely surprising given the origination of this agency and the machinations to preserve it for the sake of skimming ‘union dues’ from independent contractors.”

Could this get any worse? Yes, yes it could.

See, all this finally came to light when the Haynes family of Michigan was recently spotlighted.

They receive money from the state of Michigan through Medicaid. They are not home healthcare workers.

Robert & Patricia Haynes take care of their 2 adult children in their home. Both their son & daughter, ages 30 & 34, are stricken with cerebral palsy & rely wholly on Robert & Patricia for their care. Rather than institutionalize the children, the Haynes’ have elected to care for them in their home. Mighty admirable, I’d say.

In the, one size fits all mentality of the state & SEIU, the parents are considered home healthcare workers. Hello Obamacare. Naturally they must be part of the union & thus must pay monthly dues.

“We’re not home health care providers — we’re parents taking care of our children,” Haynes told the Detroit Fox affiliate.
This is the problem with public employee unions as a whole. They support politicians that write laws that bolster the unions & the unions, through the dues they forcibly collect, funnel the money right back to the politicians to get them reelected.

Sven and Ole worked together and both were laid off, so off they went to the unemployment office.

Asked his occupation, Ole said, “Panty stitcher; I sew the elastic onto cotton panties.” The clerk looked up panty stitcher. Finding it classified as unskilled labor, she gave him $300 a week in unemployment pay.

Sven was asked his occupation. “Diesel fitter,” he replied.

Since diesel fitter was a skilled job, the clerk gave Sven

$600 a week. When Ole found out, he was furious. He stormed back into the unemployment office to find out why his friend and coworker was collecting double his pay.

The clerk explained that panty stitchers were unskilled and diesel fitters were skilled labor.

Once upon a time Dracula decided he needed a sidekick. He devised a competition to find which is the finest bat to stand on his side.

So all the bats were honored to take part. The rules were simple. Whichever bat drinks the most blood, will be the winner?

So the first bat goes and comes back after 10 minutes. Her mouth was full of blood. Dracula says: “Congratulations, how did you do that?” The bat said: “Do you see that tower? Behind it there is a house. I went in and sucked the blood of all the family”. “Very good” said Dracula.

The second bat flies off and comes back about 5 minutes later, her entire face covered in blood. An astonished Dracula says, “How did you do that?” The bat replies ” Do you see that tower? Behind it there is a school. I went in and drank the blood of all the children”. “Impressive” said Dracula.

Now, the third bat goes and comes back after 3 minutes literally covered in blood from head to toe. Dracula is stunned. “How on earth did you do that????” he asked. And the bat replies. “Do you see this tower?” Once again, Dracula replies with a yes.

Could you imagine this speech to this group even 10 or 15 years ago? Open for all to see & hear & no one cares who sees or hears? How far we have sunk in such a short time.

At an awards ceremony of the Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America, Michigan democrat representative John Conyers says, “This system, this capitalist system, is broken and may be nearly unrepairable, because the regulatory forces in the government are not willing to step to the plate.” He claims there aren’t any regulations on the brokers, banks & such because the regulators don’t know what they’re doing. He continues to explain to the group that the Occupy events are just like the early days of the civil rights struggle. He neglects to mention that they in the sixties were struggling almost exclusively against southern democrats, but I digress. Conyers claims, “We’re helping make America the democracy that it has yet to become. This is going to be the most important 12 months in American history in the 21st century.” Scary as that sounds, it may just be John.

Observation: Ever notice what the vocation of almost all these lefties is? Lawyers or law professors. Have anyone of these people ever been involved in a real business, ever made anything? Have they ever really dealt with the real world?

Back to Conyers. Come on John. There is not enough government regulation & oversight? Honestly? Who thinks that?

Dodd-Frank

Yes, that is what our government is known for, hands off policy. And saying that they want a democracy is admitting they don’t really understand what it is, or do know & that is worse. I think it is the latter. Those writing the rules and crafting the regulations know exactly what they’re doing.

The founders were quite clear of their feelings toward democracy. It’s mob rule.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. I like that one. Some have attributed it to Ben Franklin, but I can’t confirm.

Franklin-Adams-Jefferson

Alexander Hamilton, “It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”

James Madison: “Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant
John Adams: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

James Madison: “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.”

Karl Marx: “Democracy is the road to socialism.”
In the long run throughout history you will find socialism is a myth. It is simply a bridge to some other form of rule. Socialism will eventually morph into communism or fascism.

According to Conyers & his ilk, this is indeed what they want. They hope to be the chosen tyrants.

A group of guys are on their way to a party, but couldn’t quite
remember the address of the house. ”I’m sure this is the one,” said the driver. ”Well, I have got to go to the bathroom SO BAD”, replied one of the others. ”I’ll go knock on the door, and check. If it’s the wrong house, at least maybe they’ll let me use their toilet!”

So he gets out and walks to the front door. He rings it once….No answer. He rings it again…..still no answer. So, he thinks, ”This is a big house, big party, maybe the party is outside, in the backyard.” He walks around the house to the back, there was no one out there either. As he aproached the back door, he was suprized to find it unlocked, and opened. There was obviously no one home, so he figured he’d just quietly run inside real quick, and use there bathroom. No one would know.

He goes inside, it’s dark & he can’t find the bathroom anywhere. He runs up the stairs and searched, and searched, till finally as he opened a door to a small room, he was amazed to find a GOLDEN TOILET. He had never seen anything like it, but remembering that he was in a stranger’s house, and that they could at anytime return home, he quickly did his business and walked out.

As he got in the car, he excitedly told his friends of the AMAZING GOLDEN TOILET. His friends laughed in disbelief at his crazy tale. They pulled out of the driveway, mocking him. They argued the whole way to the party.

A couple of hours later, on the way home from the party, they drive past the house with the GOLDEN TOILET. The guy insists on stopping so he could prove to his friends the these people really did have a GOLDEN TOILET.

So the friends agree to check it out. They all walk up to the front door and ring the bell. A woman answers the door. ”Excuse me maam, but could you please let me show my friends here your GOLDEN TOILET, they don’t believe me!”
The woman replies, ”So YOU’RE the guy!”,then yells to her husband in the house, ”HONEY!?!…HERES THE GUY THAT CRAPPED IN YOUR TUBA!”’

Let me begin by saying that I am not a scientist, but I am a thinker & can do actual research when it is necessary, although thoughtless clichéd talking points would take a lot less time.

If you haven’t heard, an oil company, Transcanada, wants to build an oil pipeline from the tar sands inside Canada travelling through several midwest states and ending up in Texas.
The proposed Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion Project is approximately 2,673-kilometers (1,661-miles)long. The 36-inch diameter crude oil pipeline would begin at Hardisty, Alberta and extend southeast through Saskatchewan, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. It would incorporate a portion of the Keystone Pipeline (Phase II) through Nebraska and Kansas to serve markets at Cushing, Oklahoma before continuing through Oklahoma to a delivery point near existing terminals in Nederland, Texas to serve the Port Arthur, Texas marketplace.

Sounds good, right? Aren’t we all looking for a path to energy independence? This is clearly one of those paths, not to mention all the private sector jobs it would create.

Evidently, we are not all looking for that. Here is just one more shining example of the green lobby standing in the way.

Todays environmentalist wacko reason is the preservation of the massive Ogallala aquifer.

Ogallala Aquifer

The Obama administration has decided to put the brakes on the project so that more environmental impact studies can be done. They say a decision will be made in 2013. The state of Nebraska is also trying to stop the pipeline or have it rerouted away for the aquifer. Great news. Environuts win over common sense again.

Digression: I believe the real reason for the delay is so as to not piss off one of their wacko voting blocks prior to an election. They are not doing well with the regular folks so they can’t afford to have any of the lefties sit the election out.

Because of the delay, Canada’s oil-sands industry could just decide to bypass U.S. markets altogether and sell fuel directly to China using a pipeline through western Canada to the shores of the Pacific.

The Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says the decision to delay approval of the Keystone XL pipeline may kill the project and could add momentum to efforts to open up the Asian market for Canadian oil.

Jim Flaherty

“The decision to delay it that long is actually quite a crucial decision,” Flaherty told Bloomberg News at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu. Flaherty adds, “I’m not sure this project would survive that kind of delay.”

Are we all hearing this? They are not just going to sit on their collective hands forever & they won’t bullied.

An industry consultant who headed the federal pipeline safety agency under the Bush administration said any changes probably would mean building a longer pipeline than TransCanada originally planned. That could expose the project to still more objections because a longer pipeline has more points at which it can fail.

“You could set this pipeline up for a death by a thousand cuts: Next, year, the new route’s not good enough,” consultant Brigham McCown said. “I’m very skeptical about the fairness of the process at this point.” You are right to be skeptical. The most vocal opponents plan to keep up their fight regardless of the route.

The environmental group Friends of the Earth are among those most vocal opponents.
“I don’t think there is an alternative route that solves the problems of this project,” said Damon Moglen, the group’s climate director.

Lefty eviroloon James Hanson wrote in the publication Alternet about the pipeline, “It will be game over for the planet”. The whole planet? Really James? Oh, guess who funds the aforementioned Alternet? The devil himself, George Soros.

What makes this worse is David & Charles Koch, yes the evil conservative Koch Brothers, are investors in the Keystone project. These devils want to front their own money on this project instead of receiving a government grant or loan guarantees. What’s wrong with these people?

It is abundantly clear to me. These groups want this project killed, whatever the cost. No oil, no security, no jobs.

Just how much oil? The pipeline will provide between 500,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil a day.

Just how many jobs? There are many and varied estimates on the amount of jobs it would create in the U.S.
I’ve seen anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000. The industry consensus is about 20-30,000. The good people opposing the pipeline have estimated no more 6,000. So let’s just find a happy medium & say about 15,000 new jobs. That’s not bad. The best part is they are private sector jobs. We don’t need to borrow from the Chicoms, & the treasury doesn’t need to print any more Monopoly money.

These are also, I guarantee, not minimum wage jobs. These people will have to buy food, housing, transportation, clothing, entertainment, etc. How many more jobs will that create, thousands?

But what about the Aquifer? An oil spill would certainly ruin it for all time (just ask James Hanson).

The aquifer is found from 15 to 90 meters (50 to 300 feet) below the land surface.

Groundwater recharge or deep drainage or deep percolation is a hydrologic process where water moves downward from surface water to groundwater & to the saturated zone. Recharge & percolation rates vary by amount of precipitation, soil type, vegetation cover and being that this region is semi arid, averages less than 25 millimeters (1 inch) annually for the region as a whole.

Nonscientist, commonsense alert: So if surface water barely percolates to the aquifer, how would oil, which is lighter than water? If there were to be an oil spill, it seems to me, they would have more than ample time to clean up the spill before it got anywhere close to the saturation zone.

So let’s see if I have this straight. We can’t drill in Alaska, off the west coast, off the Atlantic coast. The gulf drilling has been severely hampered due to the bogus BP, end of the world environmental disaster.
Have we heard anything of the BP spill? No? Wonder why? Because it had almost no lasting impact on the environment. Mother earth cleaned it up almost entirely by her little self. Oil, a naturally occurring substance was cleaned up by other naturally occurring substances.

Now we can’t move someone else’s oil across our country. Next they’ll us we can’t harvest whales for our lanterns.